Sunday, 1 April 2012

The 2kDozen 500: #125 - Frankie Rose, "Interstellar"

This is a sweet album, isn't it? Sweet with noises and charming little details. Very much mood music and a wistful kind of mood at that. A lighter Echo & The Bunnymen mebbes. A sunny Cure.

Frankie is a veteran of Vivian Girls and Crystal Stilts, I read. And this is her second solo album. Don't know why it should bother me that she's bandied about with so many groups. It seems though she's getting sick of it herself.

It starts with floaty synths and some warm "Whoo-oh-ohs": "Moving swiftly on the interstellar highway" she begins. "Weightless/Free from predictable ways now." This sounds like someone wanting to escape. This carries on into "Know Me" when she says she'd rather be dead than lied and talked about. Is this the scene troubling her? The music is within the mold of the witchy, whispery music that's been coming out of the Brooklyn. "Gospel/Grace" again says "Things aren't what they seem/When the sun goes down."

"Daylight Sky" cracks open the sad, woozy synths again. "Pair of Wings" is also weary: "Show me your scans/I'll show you mine" and "All I want is/A pair of wings to fly/Into the blue". The music takes a while to swell up into a landscape behind her. "Had We Had It" sounds rueful, reflecting that "we had it all". The music again is hanging back up in the clouds. An unhappy distance. "Night Swim" moves over a snappy early Cure bass line with some bendy Monument Valley guitar, but again is about being let go.

"Apples For The Sun" slows and stills everything down a bit, but is mournful still. "Moon On My Mind" cheers up a bit but perhaps this is because the escape route is beginning to open up ahead of her. Then "The Fall" builds on a cello riff with banked up voices and soft washes again until the album fades sadly away.